A boy came running around the corner of the path.  He struck out at Maude.  With a remarkably swift movement she retaliated.

“Ouch!” he exclaimed.

“You got him that time,” I laughed, and, being detected, she suddenly blushed.  It was this act that drew my attention to her, that defined her as an individual.  Before that I had regarded her merely as a shy and provincial girl.  Now she was brimming with an unsuspected vitality.  A certain interest was aroused, although her shyness towards me was not altered.  I found it rather a flattering shyness.

“It’s Hugh,” she explained, “he’s always trying to be funny.  Speak to Mr. Paret, Hugh.”

“Why, that’s my name, too,” I said.

“Is it?”

“She knocked my hat off a little while ago,” said Hugh.  “I was only getting square.”

“Well, you didn’t get square, did you?” I asked.

“Are you going to speak in the tows hall to-night?” the boy demanded.  I admitted it.  He went off, pausing once to stare back at me....  Maude and I walked on.

“It must be exciting to speak before a large audience,” she said.  “If I were a man, I think I should like to be in politics.”

“I cannot imagine you in politics,” I answered.

She laughed.

“I said, if I were a man.”

“Are you going to the meeting?”

“Oh, yes.  Father promised to take me.  He has a box.”

I thought it would be pleasant to have her there.

“I’m afraid you’ll find what I have to say rather dry,” I said.

“A woman can’t expect to understand everything,” she answered quickly.

This remark struck me favourably.  I glanced at her sideways.  She was not a beauty, but she was distinctly well-formed and strong.  Her face was oval, her features not quite regular,—­giving them a certain charm; her colour was fresh, her eyes blue, the lighter blue one sees on Chinese ware:  not a poetic comparison, but so I thought of them.  She was apparently not sophisticated, as were most of the young women at home whom I knew intimately (as were the Watling twins, for example, with one of whom, Frances, I had had, by the way, rather a lively flirtation the spring before); she seemed refreshingly original, impressionable and plastic....

We walked slowly back to the house, and in the hallway I met Mrs. Hutchins, a bustling, housewifely lady, inclined to stoutness, whose creased and kindly face bore witness to long acquiescence in the discipline of matrimony, to the contentment that results from an essentially circumscribed and comfortable life.  She was, I learned later, the second Mrs. Hutchins, and Maude their only child.  The children of the first marriage, all girls, had married and scattered.